10 Doctor Who Mysteries That Will NEVER Be Answered
4. Did The Doctor Push The Half-Face Man?
One of the most striking moments in Deep Breath is the climactic showdown between the newly-regenerated Twelfth Doctor and his inaugural adversary, the Half-Face Man.
Part of the reason this scene sticks in the memory is because of its ambiguous ending. We know how it ends – with the Half-Face Man atop the spire of Big Ben – but not how he got there. Did he jump, or was he pushed?
Well, in typically mysterious Moff fashion, the episode refuses to tell us.
The Doctor and the Half-Face Man are at loggerheads, and the only way out is for one of them to deviate from their “basic programming.” For the Half-Face Man, this means suicide. For the Doctor, it means murder.
The more tantalising outcome is for the Doctor to have pushed the Half-Face Man – a moment that is shockingly uncharacteristic, and yet totally in keeping with the more ‘means to an end’ approach of this new incarnation.
The suggestion that the Half-Face Man simply yeeted himself onto Big Ben is, by comparison, pretty underwhelming. Though there’s always the possibility that the Doctor talked him into self-destruction, thus keeping his hands clean.
That final, haunting, fourth wall-breaking shot of the Doctor certainly seems to suggest some involvement. But we’ll never know for sure.